Transport infrastructure not keeping up
Increased commute times for southern Auckland communities has one nurse calling for a town planning rethink.
Claire O’Brien said new housing developments are going up with vital infrastructure being an afterthought.
O’Brien, a nurse specialist based in south Auckland, is calling on others to submit on Auckland Council’s 10 year budget and Auckland 2050 plan.
The Hunua resident primarily catches public transport to work at Middlemore Hospital in
ta¯huhu. But just how much the roads are at squeezing point is apparent when she has to drive to other clinics.
On occasion O’Brien has to drive to the Manukau SuperClinic in Manurewa or to Ma¯ngere.
‘‘A trip to Ma¯ngere should take me 45 minutes [with no traffic], but it’s like a 2 hour journey now,’’ she said. ‘‘At the Drury onramp, a lot of staff here will wait 30 to 40 minutes just to get on the motorway there.’’
O’Brien says there has been a planning failure with no infrastructure to support developments in southern parts of the city.
She began looking into the issue and reading other residents’ experiences online.
‘‘There is space to build in south Auckland, but there’s no infrastructure being built with it ... before they built these developments they should be putting in infrastructure.’’
It prompted her to start an online petition calling on council authorities to review and reprioritise their plans. It’s gathered more than 700 signatures.
As part of the Auckland Plan 2050, a focus is on connecting the city. One of its directions are to ‘‘create an integrated transport system connecting people, places, goods and services’’.
O’Brien said the key is convenience and frequency. ‘‘There has to be some roading improvements, but I think public transport is the way to go - moving a mass amount of people.’’
She said she would use public transport to get from Hunua to Ma¯ngere, but the frequent connections aren’t in place. ‘‘People don’t want to get off a train and wait 20-odd minutes for a bus to come in bad weather, then add another 40 minute trip on top of that.’’
If O’Brien commutes by train she will leave home at about 6.50am. Arriving at Papakura train station before 7.20am and getting to Middlemore by about 7.40am. However, by car it’s not so plain sailing.
O’Brien will leave at the same time and head through Papakura to Mill Rd. ‘‘You crawl, you might do 20kmh. Crawl, crawl and crawl.’’
Once she is through Alfriston, it’s onto the southern motorway before catching traffic near Papatoetoe. ‘‘Usually it’s about two hours. On a bad day it’s two to three hours.’’
The commute is so bad O’Brien has asked her boss to swap clinics to the SuperClinic in Browns Rd. Even there it will take her more than an hour to drive.
Two hour commutes either way can take its toll, she said. PETROL TAX UNFAIR: All of these transport plans come at a cost.
Auckland Council is also asking ratepayers about a proposed regional fuel tax - at about 10 cents per litre. Its draft budget shows planned spending on transport projects increasing from $7.9 billion to $11b in the next 10 years. A fuel tax could provide up to $1.5b of that over the same period.
O’Brien says she’s mixed over the proposal.
She says south Auckland motorists will be unfairly targeted, when in some cases driving is the only option they have. ‘‘It’s got to be paid for, so why not spread it so that all transport users would be paying?’’
Rates could be another avenue, she says, but ‘‘it’s hard to know what the fairest way is’’. She said any funds raised will need to come back to the area.
‘‘Money isn’t being kept in our area. We’re contributing, but it’s not flowing back in.’’